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[tlacamazatl]

https://www.youtube.com/live/uEyGA3TG2o ... RDZ-X7t0In

There will be neography trivia at 8pm EST 20MAY, all are invited!

[jcb]

Thank you, everyone! I had asked because over the past half year, I've sometimes gotten to visit a nearby city in that range and saw it as a very nice place to visit, apparently big enough for some of the upsides of city life, but still more charming than many larger places. If I wouldn't be in a position where I'm in some ways tied to a place, I'd even seriously think about moving there. And that got me thinking - I've got the impression that places like that don't feature much in pop culture. Characters in popular fiction usually seem to live either in smaller town or villages, or in much larger cities, or in suburbs of much larger cities.

But it's all relative. My grandparents have lived near or in a town with about 1000 people in it their whole lives, so they'd describe it as a big city, but somebody from a truly big city, like zompist from Chicago, describe it as just a suburb.

Not sure if there are that many people, including zompist, who'd call a place a "suburb" if it's larger than any other nearby place, no matter how big or small it might be.

Of course, a suburb has to be near a city. I meant that you and zompist probably wouldn't call a city of 75,000 a "big city" like my grandparents do.

[Starbeam]

This is an excellent paper explaining why ‘pitch accent’ is an incoherent term: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman ... accent.pdf

Do you have any sources on how to correctly understand the phenomenon then? That source is also a textbook example of someone going on tangents, but in that case it seems like they've been misunderstood so much that they have no choice

My advice would be to look at a particular language, such as the classic example of Tokyo Japanese. Masayoshi Shibatani's The languages of Japan contains a good overview, including dialects other than Tokyo.

Hyman strikes me as making a common mistake, which is taking our definitional systems as aspects of reality. Is there a matter of fact whether Japanese is a "pitch-accent" system, rather than what seems to be his preferred term, "reduced tone"? No. Classification systems are our tools, not our masters. When you look at enough languages, almost any linguistic feature starts to look confused and contradictory. But if you describe a single language, most of the confusion disappears.

If I understand Shibatani, you could explain Tokyo Japanese as a stress accent system, since knowing where the "stress" is tells you all you need to know. I don't know why you'd want to do that, since the primary feature of the syllables is pitch not volume, but you could. However, this would not work for all dialects; in some you need to know both the location of the "stress" and whether the word is inherently high or low tone.

(bolding mine)

I'm quite a bit late, but thank you for this advice. I had Japanese in mind, and this was a great way of explaining it to me. Thank you! That said, what's the difference between an inherent high pitch and high tone?

I also realize i'm late for your writing advice reponse. I can't find any examples of me using conjunctions like "but" too much. I think i'm getting better at making wording for my sentences.

[Starbeam]

Thank you, everyone! I had asked because over the past half year, I've sometimes gotten to visit a nearby city in that range and saw it as a very nice place to visit, apparently big enough for some of the upsides of city life, but still more charming than many larger places. If I wouldn't be in a position where I'm in some ways tied to a place, I'd even seriously think about moving there. And that got me thinking - I've got the impression that places like that don't feature much in pop culture. Characters in popular fiction usually seem to live either in smaller town or villages, or in much larger cities, or in suburbs of much larger cities.

But it's all relative. My grandparents have lived near or in a town with about 1000 people in it their whole lives, so they'd describe it as a big city, but somebody from a truly big city, like zompist from Chicago, describe it as just a suburb.

Not sure if there are that many people, including zompist, who'd call a place a "suburb" if it's larger than any other nearby place, no matter how big or small it might be.

Of course, a suburb has to be near a city. I meant that you and zompist probably wouldn't call a city of 75,000 a "big city" like my grandparents do.

On top of that, it has to be significantly connected to the "urb". Like, a settlement originally or completely dependent on another. There's few terms i think should be common knowledge, because they'd help elaborate a lot of situations. I know Chicago and most of us do too, so i'm going to be using its surrounding area for the examples. The terms come from Joel Garreau's 1991 book Edge City Life on the New Frontier:

• Edge cities (or suburb downtowns) are suburbs that are predominantly business district. Examples include Libertyville and Schaumburg. Outside Chicagoland, think of Bloomington Minnesota, City of Industry California, and Tysons Virginia.
• Boomburbs are basically suburbs with a population comparable to that of a city. Without a sufficient work base, the "city" is effectively a ton of houses and maybe a strip mall or two. Examples include Arlington Heights, Bolingbrook, and Naperville. Outside Chicagoland, think of Oakland County, Michigan, and many of Phoenix's near suburbs.
• Satellite cities are nearby cities that would be their own metro area, but are too close and too small next to a much bigger one and thus have been swallowed up in urban sprawl. They still maintain an original downtown and some character of their own. Examples include Aurora, Elgin, Gary, Joliet, Kenosha, and Waukegan. Outside Chicagoland, think of Camden New Jersey, Pontiac Michigan, and Oakland California. Notice how despite often being labelled suburbs, all of them are very populous, dense, yet also somewhat poor areas of the country.
• Pluricentric cities are like the above, but one or more of them retain some comparable influence to the core city. Might even count as one big core city. In this case, think of Dallas-Fort Worth, the San Francisco Bay Area, the Minnesota Twin Cities. I'm not counting one city arbitrarily separated for historical reasons, like DC, Alexandria, and Arlington.
• There's also cities rather close to each other, but maintain a distinct environment as a result of indepently gaining large populations. You could lump them together if you really stretch it, but it wouldn't always make sense. Chicago has this relationship with Milwaukee and Rockford, DC has this with Baltimore, and San Francisco has this with San Jose. As far as i'm aware, there's no term for this phenomenon besides "region" or "combined metropolitan area".

People also know of the inner ring and outer ring suburbs, exurbs, enclaves, exclaves, college towns, resort towns, company towns, government towns, etc. But i don't feel a need to define what's in common use. If there's any point i'm trying to make, it's that "suburbia" isn't as simple as "what's not the urban core". This is definitely an American perspective and anyone from the rest of the world's free to chime in about their situation.

[Travis B.]

• There's also cities rather close to each other, but maintain a distinct environment as a result of indepently gaining large populations. You could lump them together if you really stretch it, but it wouldn't always make sense. Chicago has this relationship with Milwaukee and Rockford, DC has this with Baltimore, and San Francisco has this with San Jose. As far as i'm aware, there's no term for this phenomenon besides "region" or "combined metropolitan area".

It should be emphasized that Chicago and Milwaukee are culturally distinct from one another despite their relative proximity to one another. Milwaukeeans consider themselves to be Wisconsinites, and to them "Illinois" (i.e. Chicagoland) is an other despite only being one to two hours away, while conversely often feel closely tied to Madison despite it being really no closer than the northern suburbs of Chicago. (This contrasts with Kenosha, which is often considered to be the northern-most suburb of Chicago.)

[Starbeam]

• There's also cities rather close to each other, but maintain a distinct environment as a result of indepently gaining large populations. You could lump them together if you really stretch it, but it wouldn't always make sense. Chicago has this relationship with Milwaukee and Rockford, DC has this with Baltimore, and San Francisco has this with San Jose. As far as i'm aware, there's no term for this phenomenon besides "region" or "combined metropolitan area".

It should be emphasized that Chicago and Milwaukee are culturally distinct from one another despite their relative proximity to one another. Milwaukeeans consider themselves to be Wisconsinites, and to them "Illinois" (i.e. Chicagoland) is an other despite only being one to two hours away, while conversely often feel closely tied to Madison despite it being really no closer than the northern suburbs of Chicago. (This contrasts with Kenosha, which is often considered to be the northern-most suburb of Chicago.)

This is not the first time you have misinterpreted something i have said, and argued the against something i already would oppose. Please stop skimming paragraphs. Like, it's the same situation with Baltimore and DC, despite them being even closer and some overlap occurring in the suburbs.

[Travis B.]

• There's also cities rather close to each other, but maintain a distinct environment as a result of indepently gaining large populations. You could lump them together if you really stretch it, but it wouldn't always make sense. Chicago has this relationship with Milwaukee and Rockford, DC has this with Baltimore, and San Francisco has this with San Jose. As far as i'm aware, there's no term for this phenomenon besides "region" or "combined metropolitan area".

It should be emphasized that Chicago and Milwaukee are culturally distinct from one another despite their relative proximity to one another. Milwaukeeans consider themselves to be Wisconsinites, and to them "Illinois" (i.e. Chicagoland) is an other despite only being one to two hours away, while conversely often feel closely tied to Madison despite it being really no closer than the northern suburbs of Chicago. (This contrasts with Kenosha, which is often considered to be the northern-most suburb of Chicago.)

This is not the first time you have misinterpreted something i have said, and argued the against something i already would oppose. Please stop skimming paragraphs. Like, it's the same situation with Baltimore and DC, despite them being even closer and some overlap occurring in the suburbs.

I didn't claim you said otherwise, rather I was emphasizing what you were saying from the standpoint of someone from Milwaukee.

[rotting bones]

The United States has its share of classism, but there's no sense of "nouveau riche". No occupation castes, no Major Families, nothing like that.

This is not true. The American aristocracy is so exclusive, they're not very public. In America, families like the Roosevelts and Vanderbilts are considered to be old money. Old money families are members of the Knickerbocker Club. A less exclusive circle is made up of people listed in the social register.

Until he was elected, Trump wasn't welcome in the social register IIRC. The historical equivalent was that American heiresses had to marry the British aristocracy to gain admission into Knickerbocker circles. The British aristocracy was less exclusive than the American aristocracy because they needed money.

Edit: A song about the Social Register:

https://youtu.be/Yif-5xBbxd4
https://youtu.be/x59vFkATXR4

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From what I can tell, there are around 12 active members on this forum.

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Two years ago, I walked a mile to Gia Cafe every morning with my spare laptop. (I had one back then.) During breaks, I ordered blueberry/chia seed smoothies, played Melty Blood, read Goethe and Will Wight.

[tlacamazatl]

Tsevhu Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwiVjGW_PLw

[malloc]

From what I can tell, there are around 12 active members on this forum.

You mean on the social register? Considering how few people post here regularly, that suggests this forum is disproportionately quite privileged. I have always sensed that I was one of poorest here and it sounds like my intuition was correct.

[Travis B.]

From what I can tell, there are around 12 active members on this forum.

You mean on the social register? Considering how few people post here regularly, that suggests this forum is disproportionately quite privileged. I have always sensed that I was one of poorest here and it sounds like my intuition was correct.

No, rotting bones was just randomly commenting on the apparent number of active members of the board, nothing more, unconnected to the rest of his post.

[bradrn]

Surely there’s more than 12?

Hmm, let’s try making a list… zompist, myself, Travis, Raphael, rotting bones, Man in Space, WeepingElf, Richard W, malloc, alice, jal, Torco, Lērisama, Ares Land… that’s already 14 who have been active within the past day, and there’s more I didn’t even get to.

[/ˌnɐˈɾɛndɚduːd/]

I exist too, though granted I'm not nearly as active as some others.

[bradrn]

I exist too, though granted I'm not nearly as active as some others.

Yes, you’re included in the ‘more I didn’t even get to’. (As is everyone else who might be tempted to say ‘me, too!’.)

[rotting bones]

You mean on the social register? Considering how few people post here regularly, that suggests this forum is disproportionately quite privileged. I have always sensed that I was one of poorest here and it sounds like my intuition was correct.

I'd be surprised if there are more than one or two members of the ZBB whose families happen to be on the social register. This number should be higher than the general population because ZBB members tend to be college educated and find the time to mess around with fictional linguistics, but not by much.

The social register only lists 25k prominent families IIRC. That's 0.02% of the families in America. If I had to bet, I'd say 0 members but I wouldn't bet an insane amount. I think dhok(?) was from a rich family. (I'm from a side branch of a wider clan with some name recognition in Bengal, though none of us ever had fabulous wealth. In fact, we're famously poor.)

The Knickerbocker Club only has 300 men. (Men only IIRC. The wives attend wider functions without being members.) This includes foreigners of comparable stature like the Aga Khan who visit and can afford the entrance fee of $50k (and additional stuff). I don't know what they did with the $15 million they took from the current members or if they already spent the funds from ex-members. They probably invest it.

The British aristocracy was less exclusive than the American aristocracy because they needed money.

Note: In the relevant time period, English wives weren't allowed to own much property, unlike under Sharia (though that wasn't gender equal either).

No, rotting bones was just randomly commenting on the apparent number of active members of the board, nothing more, unconnected to the rest of his post.

Yes, I felt like post structures were too non-random.

[rotting bones]

Surely there’s more than 12?

Hmm, let’s try making a list… zompist, myself, Travis, Raphael, rotting bones, Man in Space, WeepingElf, Richard W, malloc, alice, jal, Torco, Lērisama, Ares Land… that’s already 14 who have been active within the past day, and there’s more I didn’t even get to.

I'm only counting people that I wouldn't be at all surprised to see an answer from on a new topic. The 12 is an average where less active members can occupy the same person slot at different times, possibly across different subforums.

Here's a start: zompist, bradrn, Travis B., Raphael, Man in Space, malloc, Weeping Elf, Richard W, alice, Lērisama/me, Torco/hwhatting, jal/Ares Land. The partial slots could be improved through rearrangement. The definition is too loose to obsess over it.

Also, "around 12" includes up to 15. Contenders for partial slots include Emily and recently, þeprussianfrog. (I hope Axas mlö comes back.) I'd be shocked if there are, say, 17 regulars under this count. I'd be floored if there were 20.

[Travis B.]

You forgot lëtzeshark.

[rotting bones]

You forgot lëtzeshark.

I haven't seen a lot from him recently. As a partial slot member, I might have missed some of his posts. I'm inclined to partial slot lëtzeshark with alice.

[rotting bones]

My phone screen keeps randomly moving the text cursor to a spot towards the top left. Sometimes I don't even notice.

[Travis B.]

My phone screen keeps randomly moving the text cursor to a spot towards the top left. Sometimes I don't even notice.

Hmmm... issue with the touch sensor?